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Customize the 'assign to' field on tickets

Notice: The plugin is deprecated in Trac 1.3.2 and later. To programmatically control the list of users that appear in the assign-to select box, subclass ConfigurableTicketWorkflow and override the get_allowed_owners method (see ​#12807). Alternatively, the set_owner field of workflow action allows groups and permissions to be specified (Since 1.1.3), in addition to an explicit list of users (see TracWorkflow#BasicTicketWorkflowCustomization).

Description

This plugin gives Trac admins a way to easily customize the 'assign to' field on tickets. It provides several base classes for you to override and implement your own methods for providing lists of valid users. You can even customize valid users for each state in your workflow.

Key features:

Adds new Extension point, IValidOwnerProvider, for plugging in your own components.

Data source agnostic: this plugin removes the need to build a customized 'assign to' select box. All your custom code has to do is decide what users are valid for a particular state and then return them.

Optional 'ensure_user_data' capability so that users who appear as valid 'assign to' targets get their key data (username, fullname, email) stored in the Trac session_attribute table. The motivation for this was so notification emails could be sent to these users, even if they have never logged in and set their preferences.

Optional get_known_users() replacement that changes Trac's 'known users' concept such that users' name and email data is retrieved from the session_attribute table, designed to work in concert with the 'ensure_user_data' capability.

Processing can be selectively disabled for individual workflow states.

Note: The framework does not modify the fields on the "New Ticket" page. It only operates on the fields as rendered on existing tickets. This is a common misunderstanding and has in fact been filed as a bug/feature request (#2634). Make sure to verify your install is working by installing the included SampleValidOwnerProvider plugin and examining an existing ticket.

Create a .py file in your Trac environment's plugins directory
This module is where you'll write your own class that implements the IValidOwnerProvider Extension point provided by FlexibleAssignTo. This is where your custom logic goes for deciding what users should appear as valid 'assign to' targets for each state, whether that logic involves querying a database, searching an LDAP directory, or getting some sort of data from your custom-built array of highly trained homing pigeons. See the SampleValidOwnerProvider.py module included with this plugin for a simple example on how it works.

provides a getUsers method that takes a 'next_action_obj' as it's sole param and returns a list of instances of SimpleUser (or a subclass) representing valid owners of that next state. Keep reading for details on the getUsers() method and the SimpleUser class. If this sounds confusing and/or you just want to experiment, go check out the source for SampleValidOwnerProvider.py.

the getUsers() method
The sole param to getUsers(), next_action_obj, represents a workflow state that is available from the current ticket state AND that implements the "set_owner" operation (if you really want to get into the nitty gritty, next_action_obj is identical to the objects in the ConfigurableTicketWorkflow.actions list in trac/ticket/default_workflow.py). next_action_obj is provided to getUsers for the sole purpose of providing a way to look up custom workflow state params. For example, if you had a workflow state defined in your trac.ini:

mystate=oldstate -> mystatemystate.name=my whoopass statemystate.operations=set_ownermystate.permissions=TICKET_MODIFY; .valid_user_groups is a param that you add and is not part of the default Trac workflow syntaxmystate.valid_user_groups=Development Managers, Admins

Then in your getUsers method your code would look something like this, to retrieve these values from this workflow state:

allowed_groups = getlist(next_action_obj, 'valid_user_groups')

You could then use the 'allowed_groups' list to query a database to get back a list of user information; in this case, return the users who are members of either the "Admins" or "Development Managers" group. Each user's info should be packed into an instance (or subclass) of SimpleUser. The final return from getUsers() should be a *unique* list of SimpleUser instances. No checks for uniqueness are guaranteed to be performed on the list of returned users. See SampleValidOwnerProvider.py for an example. Note that individual workflow states can be disabled; see item 4, "Enable/disable individual workflow states", below.

the SimpleUser class
There are three fields in SimpleUser that you *must* set. Not having these set, eg left as their default None, will lead to assert exceptions from FlexibleAssignTo:

SimpleUser.username
SimpleUser.option_value
SimpleUser.option_display

There are standard get/set methods for these; see the SimpleUser class for specific method prototypes. Note: the format of username values *must* match the format of usernames for logged-in users: if John Doe logs in with the username "jdoe", then a SimpleUser instance representing John Doe should get its username attribute set to "jdoe". If you don't do this, FlexibleAssignTo will not work correctly.

3. Configuration options

The following options should be specified in the [flexibleassignto] section of your trac.ini.

ensure_user_data
Defaults to false.
FlexibleAssignTo also provides functionality to ensure that key user data (username, fullname, email) is added to the trac session_attribute table as said user data is retrieved for "assign to" use, so that ticket assign/modification emails will be sent to the assigned user's email address. Note: this feature will not overwrite session_attribute data already present.

use_custom_get_known_users
Defaults to false.
Overrides the default get_known_users capability provided by default Trac (trac.env) method of the same name: whereas the Trac default get_known_users returns info only for those users who have logged in, this method returns info for every user who has data in the session_attribute table and is flagged authenticated, eg session_attribute.authenticated = 1. This functionality was designed to work in concert with the "ensure_user_data" feature, which auto-populates user email & name in the session_attribute table. Generates one tuple for every user, of the form (username, name, email), ordered alphanumerically by username. Note: Changes to this setting require a server restart to take effect. Note: You should also enable the ensure_user_data option if you use this method, otherwise the behavior will be superficially no different than the default Trac get_known_users functionality.

Finally, note that by default FlexibleAssignTo operates on every state in your workflow, replacing the "assign to" field for every state with a "set_owner" operation. To disable FlexibleAssignTo for particular states without having to disable the entire plugin, add the following key to your workflow state:

mystate.use_flexibleassignto=false

Example

For an example of how to implement IValidOwnerProvider, see the included sample plugin SampleValidOwnerProvider.py.